Ren Jianyu – A Remarkable but Ordinary Man

• Author: China Law Digest

Ren Jianyu, 25, is a graduate of Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences studying Chinese. In 2009, he was the vice editor-in-chief of “Shu Yuan,” a magazine published by the university library. According to his colleagues, during his undergraduate studies, the only extraordinary point about Ren was that he commented on TV news instead of watching TV news like everyone else did.

In the year he graduated, he was selected to be the assistant of the Director of Yushan Township, Pengshui County, and was in charge of family planning matters and petitions of villagers. In his spare time, he published 40 articles on “Pengshui Daily”. Some people commented Ren as a person who must write out what he thought was inappropriate.

On August 17, 2011, the police summoned Ren to interrogate him for the suspected crime of “spreading rumors.” Ren knew that the police summoned him because he has shared some censored photos on Tencent Weibo. That night, he was arrested for inciting subversion of state power. The evidence against him the police obtained was mainly Ren’s comments on current issues posted in the internet. For example, he commented that “Chongqing raised a big flag of the second Cultural Revolution: Singing red songs, claiming to have jumped forward, exaggerating government achievements, worshiping a single leader, and breaking the law.” Another piece of evidence collected was a T-shirt with the words “I would rather die instead of having no freedoms.” Since the Chongqing...